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21.1. Event Scheduler Overview

MySQL Events are tasks that run according to a schedule. Therefore, we sometimes refer to them as scheduled events. When you create an event, you are creating a named database object containing one or more SQL statements to be executed at one or more regular intervals, beginning and ending at a specific date and time. Conceptually, this is similar to the idea of the Unix crontab (also known as a “cron job”) or the Windows Task Scheduler.

Scheduled tasks of this type are also sometimes known as “temporal triggers”, implying that these are objects that are triggered by the passage of time. While this is essentially correct, we prefer to use the term events in order to avoid confusion with triggers of the type discussed in Chapter 20, Triggers. Events should more specifically not be confused with “temporary triggers”. Whereas a trigger is a database object whose statements are executed in response to a specific type of event that occurs on a given table, a (scheduled) event is an object whose statements are executed in response to the passage of a specified time interval.

While there is no provision in the SQL Standard for event scheduling, there are precedents in other database systems, and you may notice some similarities between these implementations and that found in the MySQL Server.

MySQL Events have the following major features and properties:

  • An event is uniquely identified by: its name; the schema to which it is assigned; and the user who created it (definer).

  • An event performs a specific action according to a schedule. This action consists of an SQL statement, which can be a compound statement in a BEGIN ... END block if desired (see Section 19.2.5, “BEGIN ... END Compound Statement Syntax”). An event's timing can be either transient or recurrent. A transient event executes one time only. A recurrent event repeats its action at a regular interval, and the schedule for a recurring event can be assigned a specific start day and time, end day and time, both, or neither. (By default, a recurring event's schedule begins as soon as it is created, and continues indefinitely, until it is disabled or dropped.)

  • Users can create, modify, and drop scheduled events using SQL statements intended for these purposes. Syntactically invalid event creation and modification statements fail with an appropriate error message. A user may include statements in an event's action which require privileges that the user does not actually have. The event creation or modification statement succeeds but the event's action fails. See Section 21.4, “The Event Scheduler and MySQL Privileges” for details.

  • Many of the properties of an event can be set or modified using SQL statements. These properties include the event's name, timing, persistence (that is, whether it is preserved following the expiration of its schedule), status (enabled or disabled), action to be performed, and the schema to which it is assigned. See Section 21.2.2, “ALTER EVENT Syntax”.

    The definer of an event cannot be changed; it is always the user who created the event. An event can be modified only by the event's definer, or by a user having privileges on the mysql.event table (see Section 21.4, “The Event Scheduler and MySQL Privileges”.)

  • An event's action statement may include most SQL statements permitted within stored routines.

MySQL 5.1.6 introduces a global variable event_scheduler which determines whether the Event scheduler is enabled for the server. This variable defaults to OFF or 0, meaning that event scheduling is not available:

mysql> SHOW GLOBAL VARIABLES LIKE 'event%';
+-----------------+-------+
| Variable_name   | Value |
+-----------------+-------+
| event_scheduler | OFF   |
+-----------------+-------+
1 row in set (0.01 sec)

mysql> SELECT @@event_scheduler;
+-------------------+
| @@event_scheduler |
+-------------------+
|                 0 |
+-------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

In order to enable event scheduling, you must first issue one of these statements:

SET GLOBAL event_scheduler = ON;

or

SET GLOBAL event_scheduler = 1;

or

SET @@global.event_scheduler = ON;

or

SET @@global.event_scheduler = 1;

Note: You can issue event-manipulation statements when event_scheduler is set to OFF or 0. No warnings or errors are generated in such cases (so long as the statements are themselves valid). However, scheduled events cannot execute until this variable is set to ON or 1. (Once this has been done, all events whose scheduling conditions are met become active.)

Note: Since event_scheduler is a global variable, you must have the SUPER privilege to set its value.

You can also enable event scheduling by starting mysqld with --event_scheduler=1 or more simply --event_scheduler. (1 is the default value in this case.)

For SQL statements used to create, alter, and drop events, see Section 21.2, “Event Scheduler Syntax”.

MySQL 5.1.6 and later provides an EVENTS table in the INFORMATION_SCHEMA database. This table can be queried to find out about the events which exist on the server. See Section 21.3, “Event Metadata”.

For information regarding event scheduling and the MySQL privilege system, see Section 21.4, “The Event Scheduler and MySQL Privileges”.


 
 
  Published under the terms of the GNU General Public License Design by Interspire